Hi all :)

I've been playing Minecraft with the family, and running a local PaperMC server for a while now, and last year set up an online server with the Oracle free tier. I've had a load of failed login attempts recently, and the server crashed. I don't know if they were related, but it made me realise that I've missed a few steps during the setup.

I have a domain that points to the server through Cloudflare, so it's easier to share, and I've got a whitelist / allowlist of Minecraft users to keep it private. My thinking is that this is what I want:

Domain name through Cloudflare to stop things like DDoS attacks, and to have https certificates (might need LetsEncrypt too?).

PaperMC server running on an Ubuntu server on Oracle's free tier. 2 cores and 10GB RAM should be enough for less than a dozen players.

Pterodactyl control panel to manage the server through a GUI from anywhere.

Firewall / block to stop connections from outside the UK. Hopefully that should restrict bots and malicious login attempts.

I've got a handful of plugins that I use, like Geyser / Floodgate and ViaVersion so the kids can log in from any client, and Dynmap so I can view the map and help them out if needs be. I've got CoreProtect and ServerBackup too. I've got OpenAudioMC so that the kids can speak to each other without putting them on something open like Discord, as they're too young for that.

I'm looking into AutoPlug at the moment to keep the plugins up to date, but I don't know if it runs with Pterodactyl or not.

Am I missing anything obvious? I'm happy with the gameplay side of things for now, but I could do with some advice on keeping everything secure.

Thanks in advance :)

Hi all :)

I manage a handful of websites and their emails using the PortableApps suite on Windows, so have a separate browser and mail client for each one. This has worked well for years, but now I'm switching to Linux, Mint specifically. I've read that I can set up profiles on Firefox and probably Thunderbird, or maybe run separate instances with things like AppImages, but it sounds like it's a messy solution, and could end up with me using the wrong profile by mistake

What I want to do is set up a virtual machine for each site, and have a completely separate instance of the programs, and hopefully a way to easily transfer the machines to other systems if needs be.

I'd prefer to use a Debian / Ubuntu based distro with Apt and the 'Windows' style desktop, as that's what I'm already used to, but am I better off installing Mint and stripping it down, or is there something more suited to this?

Thanks in advance :)

Hi all :)

I've just bought a Vitesse Force ebike. It was second hand, but brand new as the previous owner bid on two separate auctions and won both (he's someone I trust, so I believe him). Other than a few tweaks, the bike is great, but I want to make it even better if possible.

The main thing I want to change is the walk assist speed. As I understand it, in the UK we can't have powered ebikes, they can only move very slowly when you're not pedalling. I tested the speed yesterday, and on a slope it's barely fast enough to stay upright.

The main reason that I bought an ebike is because I'm disabled and overweight, and live in the middle of a load of hills. I'm hoping to get the walk assist speed up just high enough to get me up a hill to the nearest flat cycle path so that I can ride, or home again afterwards if I've overdone it. For now I can't pedal continuously for long enough to get to the top, and the pedal assist stops when I stop.

The other thing I'm curious about changing is the number of gears. The bike is a seven speed, but I've never used an ebike before, so I don't know if that's enough for when I want to turn the pedal assist off.

The bike is here for anyone interested:

https://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/16183641/vitesse-force-mtb-wm-electric-bike-16183641

I'd be grateful for any advice :)

Went out on a rare clear night to a wetlands near me to take some photos of the stars. As it was so dark, and the stars are so small, I had to rely on the focus peaking function of my camera to tell if the stars were in focus or not.

I've got home and started to process the photos, and I've found out that despite the camera telling me that they were in focus, they clearly weren't.

Hey ho, what's a wasted few hours in the freezing cold between friends...

Sorry, crooked isn't the best word, but I can't think of a better one.

I'm still quite new to OSM, and I want to start adding the buildings in my town. When I open the edit option though, the map overlay is at an angle. It's not a massive amount, but it's enough that you can see one sometimes two sides of most buildings, so the roof isn't aligned straight down, if that makes sense?

I live near Aberdare in South Wales, and you can see that where someone has added some buildings in the town centre at some point, they're now not aligned with the map overlay:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=20/51.71312/-3.44499

Do I draw around the roof that I can see on the map? Do I edit the existing buildings so that they line up with the overlay? I'm not sure what the best course of action is for something like this.

Thanks in advance :)

Apologies if this is a simple question and I've missed something, but I'd like to be able to use Voyager on my PC.

If I just log in on my browser, I only get logged in to my home instance. If I use wefwef.app, I can browse like I'm on my phone, but without my preferences and block list.

Is there a way to use Voyager and sync my preferences, block list, subscriptions etc?

Update: My wife has decided to go for the repair. I managed to find the parts for about £30, and we're getting it done in a local place next week. Thanks for the advice :)

Hi all :)

My wife has dropped her Mi 10t Lite 5g one too many times, and now as well as a cracked screen, it won't charge. As far as I can tell, the charging port has come loose.

I'm hoping to get an estimate of the repair price, as all the local shops are closed until next week, but I'm also hoping to find some possible replacements to give her some options.

She mainly uses it for Facebook, emails, and WhatsApp, and some of the farming games where you seem to just click crap randomly. She also connects it to her car for maps and music, and takes photos of our kid.

A micro SD slot is essential, mostly due to the amount of music and photos she stores on it.

I'm hoping to spend around £200, but that's flexible if there's a jump in quality or features.

Thanks in advance :)

Hi all :)

Apologies for the long writeup, but I'm not sure if the background is important or not.

I've got a media server currently running Xubuntu (getting ready to be transitioned to a proper server OS before anyone asks), and I've been having a problem with static IP addresses.

About a year ago I was having a problem with the ethernet card switching from a static IP to DHCP, and screwing up the services that depended on the IP address. It appeared to be a problem with my ISP router (BT SmartHub 2). I thought I'd fixed it, and didn't have any trouble for a while.

I added a second ethernet card to split my traffic. My VPN doesn't allow split tunneling on Linux, and I wanted some traffic to go through the VPN while some bypassed it. I hadn't set anything up for that yet, but did give the second ethernet card a static IP address. I changed the DNS servers on both to go through my AdGuard installation on the same machine, and some other ad blocking DNS servers.

When I first installed the second ethernet card I had a few problems, but my network switch died at the same time, and replacing it appeared to cure the issues. The issues were similar to before, in that I couldn't get a static IP to stick.

To now - Last night we were having some power issues in the area, power surges and brownouts. In the time that it took me to get to my PC and log in to the media server to shut it down, it had rebooted at least three times. I shut everything down successfully, and after I turned everything back on this morning, the services like Plex that don't need the IP all seemed to be working properly.

After my kid went to bed, I tried to log onto the server to check it. Nothing that needed the IP address would work. I tried the second IP address and that was the same. I managed to log in with NoMachine and saw that there were two new ethernet connections, both set to DHCP, and they were being used instead of the previous connections. The previous connections apparently haven't been used for the last six days.

I tried deleting one of the new connections to see if it would force Xubuntu to use the old ones, and it seemed to work, but deleting the second one cut off the network connections completely. After connecting a monitor and peripherals to the server, I could see an option for an Auto Connection in the network dropdown menu, and that let me connect again.

My previous connections are still in the network manager with all the static IP settings, but there are two new Auto Ethernet connections too, using DHCP.

Can anyone give me a clue as to what's happened here please? I thought it was a problem caused by the power problems, but it's apparently been going on for almost a week.

Apologies in advance if I'm slow to reply for the next few days, and thank you in advance for any help :)

A few years ago I became seriously ill. I was in a coma on heavy duty meds, and had a kidney transplant. I'm much better than I was, but I can't do a lot of things like I could before.

We've now got quite a few kids in the extended family, so a while ago I wrote a short story to try to make it easier for them to understand. My wife and family like the story and have suggested making it into a picture story book. Problem is, I can't draw and my imagination isn't very good.

How can I get pictures for the story if I can't do it myself and don't have the money to hire someone? I want to avoid using AI tools because of the potential copyright issues.

I haven't tried the services like Fiverr because I've heard that they force a race to the bottom on prices, but does anyone have any experience, or have any ideas of what I can do please?

Thanks in advance :)

A few years ago I bought an old Mac, PowerPC I think, but it doesn't work properly. If I boot normally only one of the two CPU cores works, but both work in safe mode.

I imagine that there are ways to repair it, but as it's second hand, I would probably be better off with a clean installation. I've never owned a Mac before, so although it's outdated, I'd rather get it back to a default state than install Linux, and it also means that once I've finished with it I can pass it on to someone else who would appreciate it.

Is there a way to get the installation media? From what I remember from the last time I tried to get it running, it can use either Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion (10. something?)

Thanks in advance :)

If I scroll past something in All and want to go back to it, I'm finding that sometimes I can't. The feed acts as if I grabbed the top of the screen and refreshes.

Just to be annoying, it doesn't always do this. Most of the time it works as expected, and lets me scroll.

It doesn't happen inside posts or communities, only the All feed. I've just checked Home and Local too, and don't get the issue.

EDIT: This is on the Android app

EDIT: I just went to the Github issue to add my report and noticed that my app updated yesterday after I was having the issue, and I haven't had it again yet. I'll hold off reporting unless it happens again with the current version of the app.

Hi all :)

I'm looking for a Kindle app replacement for my phone and Kindle Fire, ideally one that can get my Amazon books if possible.

I want to be able to add books through Calibre, and sync them to the furthest page read on all devices, and I want to be able to store all my books without the app removing them.

Does anyone know of an app that does this please?